We Cannot Change Negative Behaviors if We Ascribe Blame to Outside Entities
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Exorcising the Negative Voice Within
The Negative Inner Critic Need Not Take Up Permanent Residence Inside of Us
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Relationship Triangles and “Small Talk” Deprive Us of Closeness
When we use small talk to avoid conflict and tension in relationships, we avoid intimacy as well.
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How Parents Can Respond to Kids Who Self-Harm
When Parents Overreact to Their Child's Thoughts and Behaviors, the Child Feels Isolated and Unsafe.
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Why Some People Die Long Before They Stop Breathing
We Can All Choose to Sit Around and Wait For Death, or Live Until We Die.
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Anxiety Lives in the Space Between Who We Are and Who We Want People to See
If the Gap Between Who We Are and Who We Want People to See Is Wide, Anxiety Has Room to Breed
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Telling Loved Ones to Fight Through Anxiety or Depression Adds Injury to Insult
Anxiety and Depression are Disorders that When Exacerbated By Guilt, Shame, and Isolation, Can Result in Self-Harm or Suicide
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Healing My Relationship with Time
As my 50th birthday storms toward me, reflection on my historical relationship with time reveals Borderline Personality traits; I had a knack for pushing time away, and crying when I felt it abandoned me. Because I demand a certain amount of control in my relationships, and time is reluctant to be controlled, we often grappled. Time went undefeated. Conversations with other people, both personally and professionally, have taught me this relationship style with time is common. Many people seem to wish time away, then wonder where it has gone. Death denial is an adaptive defense mechanism we use to shield us from morbid preoccupation with mortality, but there comes a point when…
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How Infidelity Transforms Death Anxiety Into Death Denial
Many of us are in a life stage characterized more by “lasts” than “firsts.” We are working at our last jobs before retirement, occupy the last homes in which we will ever live, and might be in the last romantic relationships of our lives. It’s not so much that there are no remaining “firsts”, but there is little thrill in first social security check, or first colonoscopy. When we sense Winter is coming, and Spring has passed, awareness of mortality triggers anxiety we didn’t experience in our youth. As we age, awareness of death increases in many ways, most powerful being the death of our parents who we once perceived as immortal. Aging also…
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Our Suicide Epidemic Is Worse Than We Would Like to Believe
Suicide is our country's second most prevalent killer, yet research lags, and misjudgment obscures the truth.
